Sony has been making some interesting decisions as of late, but this latest one appears to be pushing them in the right direction. It was announced today, November 22, 2022, that Sony will be investing thousands of dollars into the China Hero Project, including games such as Lost Soul Aside and Convallaria.
Sony took a few hits this year in terms of not only sales but issues due to inflation. We learned that they were increasing the price of their consoles back in August of this year due to a few economic setbacks they were not prepared for. It seems now that Sony is on the up and up, as they have decided to invest and support small indie developers as well as some of the bigger engineers in China. For those who don't know, Sony's China Hero Project is a ginormous program created to fund the smaller developers in China in order to help them gain traction within the ever-growing gaming industry.
According to Reuters, Sony will be expanding this project even further and funding Chinese indie devs with a monumental amount of money. Some of the games that they will be investing in include Anno: Mutationem, Lost Soul Aside, and Convallaria. Sony has seemed to benefit from projects like this in the past, due to the fact that they have a fundamental rule that comes into play with the games they decide to invest in; they are exclusive to Sony. This means that per the contract, the titles involved with the projects, including the China Hero Project, will not get any Xbox ports.
This strategic move by Sony seems to be a way to make a comeback, as they have been slightly overthrown by Microsoft over the past few years. Microsoft has made several announcements in regard to Sony's choices this past year, including their decision to raise prices. China has played a giant part in the evolution of games as we know them today, and because of that Asian regions are known to be quite the boost to companies such as Microsoft and Sony. It's almost as if the companies are competing head-to-head to see who can expand and progress their influence in other countries the fastest to gain the upper hand in the industry.
This could prove to be a very good move for Sony, as we know that the local government in China has extreme rules when it comes to releasing and publishing games. The Chinese government is known to halt the release of online games, as well as limit the amount of time per day minors are allowed to spend playing video games. With that said, maybe the local government will loosen the reins as these larger companies invest in these local developers and engineers. Though we won't know for sure for some time, this could be a huge step in the right direction for Sony, and for the gaming industry in China as a whole.
